‘Laughable’ Probably Not Angle Tom Cruise Was Looking For

Well that was short lived. “Valkyrie”, the WWII era story of Germans who turned against Hitler, has suffered a series of bruises in its road to release and just when things seemed to have improved it all came crashing back down. After being bumped from its original date of February 2008 after terrible reviews the film went back for edits in an attempt to make it come out as an action thriller in December 2008. It looks like director Bryan Singer was only successful in making that transition with the trailer.

Previews of the film left audience members with a far less than favorable reaction:

“It’s an unsettling scene but you almost start to laugh. His character is resisting it but you never forget it’s Tom Cruise saying ‘Heil Hitler.’ It’s funny and shocking at the same time.”

It doesn’t get much better with another viewer:

“It was disgusting,” said another who saw the film. “It was like watching someone pluck their contacts out. The film just isn’t a thriller at all. It’s a bunch of white guys in Nazi uniforms. It’s too bad. And Tom doesn’t speak with a German accent, though they did add a voice-over of him speaking German to the beginning of the film. Still, it’s as if he could say ‘I complete you’ at any time. This is not his Oscar moment.”

Damn. I was getting psyched for “Valkyrie” but I’m not completely turned off yet because Kidman and Urban can be real jerks when they’ve been drinking at the movies.